There has been a plethora of articles, podcasts and interviews on the death of wokeism in the past year.
Is it dead? Is it dying? Is it just mutating? Is it not even changing; it’s just got more backlash?
We know from the free speech crises in the Western world, particularly in the Anglosphere, that the irrational, emotional, illogical, and fact-free analyses of history during the past decade or so have seen bizarre revisions of history.
We have seen the consequences of protests over the misdeeds, real or imagined, of figures in history, with a particular outrage for any involvement, however tangential, in the Atlantic slave trade. History must be regarded in the context of the time, not from the perspective of current mores and trends.
So statues came down or were defaced as representing ‘dead, white, men’ (DWM). This became a huge affront to the sensitive and ignorant. Any consideration as to whether symbols of the past should receive continued public exposure or perhaps less exposure did not result from democratic debate and decision-making. It was the stuff of adolescent behaviour: distasteful and embarrassing.
Such has been the democratic moment in these societies that sweating the small stuff has been treated as an existential crisis.
The disaffection with and ignorance of history, the power of social media, the poorly-managed and unjustifiable restrictions during an epidemic, together with a generation with little appreciation of how fortunate they are, proved to be a combustible mix.
Idiotic self-righteousness
There has been a backlash against much of the idiotic self-righteousness that has been on display in the West. However, a small corner of London leads one to fear that the decline of civilisation is inevitable, and probably closer than we think.
Joanna Williams writes in sp¡ked (Dead, white men are being punished for imagined thoughtcrimes) that the Labour-run Camden Town Council in London has “declared war on statues of ‘white, male, oppressors'”.
The council has devised a means of assessing the sins of men based not on what they did, for good or ill, but on what they might have thought.
In other words, figures who might be cancelled include “those who may have privately held ‘discriminatory ideas’.”
According to Williams, this is not a question of the Council having psychic powers. They will work from the premise is that “pretty much all figures from ‘white, male-dominated spheres of public life are bound to have entertained ‘prejudiced beliefs about ethnicity, faith, gender, disability and sexuality’. In other words, if you were a white man or ever worked with white men, then your private thoughts are bound to have been bad.”
In other words, the Council believes that “dead white men should be punished simply for thinking in line with their contemporaries.”
Mystery and danger
It matters not that said DWMs may have been extraordinarily brave men to venture out into a world of mystery and danger. Nor that discoveries were made that changed economies and increased wealth to an unprecedented degree. Nor that inventions helped minimise the drudge-work of many and allowed people to advance in society. Nor that philosophy and political thought flowed from the minds of such men and that this led to fairer, democratic societies and an immeasurable reduction in inequality.
No. What matters is that these men didn’t hold the views that some 21st century, historically illiterate numpties think they should have held.
Williams notes that Sir Francis Drake did not fly the ‘Progress Pride’ flag on the Golden Hind. William Pitt the Younger did not take the knee for Black Lives Matter. “It would be historically illiterate to think they might have done so.” British understatement lives!
The Council wants to ensure that all public artworks and memorials are ‘truly inclusive and representative of our diverse and vibrant communities.’ The diversity of thought in the West’s many “communities” would shock the Council numpties to their hugely ignorant cores, if they bothered to look into it.
If the figures of the past were to have thought the way the Camden Council worthies think, feudal life would prevail with a life of misery for the vast majority of people; we wouldn’t have the resources that make modern life so manageable and varied, and life expectancy would be around 35.
As Ayaan Hirsi Ali once said in relation to the hardships faced by women in the West: if you want to witness unimaginable hardships for women, travel.
Can’t cure ‘stupid’
There are many hellhole countries that would make the entitled of the West less ungrateful for living in the West. But as the saying goes: you can’t cure ‘stupid’.
If Camden Council is reflective of where the West is headed, maybe Western civilisation will collapse with a whimper, or maybe, at the behest of the wimps, it will just go ‘poof’.
[Image: Sir Francis Drake, Plymouth, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6150408]
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